When I first joined the BBC I asked a very experienced and subtle journalist what was meant by BBC impartiality. “It means we don’t take sides,” he said. “We don’t take sides either explicitly or implicitly. We test all opinion toughly but fairly and we let the audience make up their own minds.”

The ability to make up your own mind based on an unbiased and factual representation of current issues?

Left wing communist bastards.... The mail will always stand as a vanguard railing against the onslaught of 'left wing' impartiality.... and boy doesn't it do that well.....

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Big Rob

I do think there has been a laziness in the coverage. I think some parts of the media frankly took a very bizarre approach towards this. I was very disappointed by some of the coverage of the BBC.

I think the Guardian newspaper got things wrong, but the BBC had more of a duty to get things right and I don't think it made an effort to do so. At the end of the day all of this created a situation where we could have lost something that was making a real difference to young people and I think that was reprehensible.

One word that kept recurring was 'workfare.' In none of our titles of our schemes or any of the principles of our schemes is workfare. It is all about job search.

"It is the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

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The BBC couldn't manage a single word about half of London schools being on strike over pensions yesterday, or the fact that the teachers' pension fund is actually in credit - but they managed a whole filmed segment on grammar schools, full of dog whistles.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. Lao Tzu

If it's true (and it seems to be) the memo to Conservative Associations about the 'Thatcher Moment' is a real smoking gun. At the moment the Telegraph and the Guardian are running with it, but of course no word from the BBC.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. Lao Tzu